10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2010

From DNA origami to osseointegration, here are the big ideas that will make headlines next year. Get to know them now, before you touch a piezoelectric display or buy your first ultracapacitor. Check out our predictions from last year for 2009 here.

Yesterday's fuel cells, like those seen here on Spacelab, require a hydrogen infrastructure. (Photograph by H4NUM4N)

Coal is dirty, and fuel cells run on hydrogen--that's the conventional wisdom. But a new generation of "direct carbon" fuel cells challenges that. Instead of relying on hard-to-produce hydrogen, these cells pull their power from an electrochemical reaction between oxygen and pulverized coal (or some other source of carbon, like biomass). The advantage: carbon-based energy production that requires no combustion, allowing it to operate at about twice the efficiency of a typical coal-fired power plant. California-based Direct Carbon Technology expects to have a 10-kilowatt prototype running on biomass in 2010, while Ohio-based Contained Energy hopes soon to use the tech to power a small light bulb. Eventually, the companies hope to build modular fuel cells that can be stacked in order to create new small-scale power plants or add clean capacity to existing plants.

For the past five years, scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton have been working on the Human Metabolome Project, a database of the 8000 naturally occurring metabolites (that is, small molecules involved in chemical reactions in the body), as well as 1450 drugs, 1900 food additives and 2900 toxins that turn up in blood and urine tests. With this information, researchers can analyze a patient's metabolomic profile, allowing them to tell from a drop of blood or urine whether somebody likes chocolate--or is likely to develop a life-threatening disease. Today, these tests require million-dollar pieces of equipment that are mostly confined to research labs. The Project's database, which was first released in 2007, is already being used in commercial applications such as drug discovery and disease diagnosis, making quick and easy tests for personalized health and medical guidance possible.

(Illustration by Leandro Castelao)

Scientists have long known about naturally occurring piezoelectric materials, which have the ability to transform electrical energy into physical stress and vice versa. But by building the property into electronic displays, companies can now create screens that can change shape or texture. This year, the technology is expected to make the leap into mainstream consumer products, offering the potential for mobile devices with screens that can harden protectively when turned off, and soften into a depressible touchscreen when turned on.

(Photograph by Associated Press)

The ideal prosthetic limb would behave like part of the natural body. Osseointegration allows prosthetics to fuse with a patient's living bone--it works by taking advantage of the fact that bone cells attach to titanium instead of rejecting it. The technique has already been used for small-scale dental and facial implants, and researchers are now bringing it to full-scale limb prosthetics. After a successful lower-leg implant in 2008 on a German shepherd named Cassidy, veterinary surgeons at North Carolina State University have six more leg operations on amputee dogs planned for 2010, and are considering a case involving an ocelot at the North Carolina Zoo. But the big challenge ahead is to implement the technology in human limbs.

(Illustration by Leandro Castelao)

Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas in the United States lie buried within layers of shale as much as 11,000 feet deep. Much of this gas is inaccessible through ordinary wells--the dense rock makes it flow too slowly. The answer: wells that drill vertically down to the shale bed, then make a gradual 90-degree horizontal turn through the shale deposit. It's an old idea, but higher energy prices and better technology have suddenly made it a hit. In 2008, Chesapeake Energy deployed 14 horizontal drilling rigs in the South's massive Haynesville Shale deposits, and they expect to have 40 rigs up by the end of 2010.

10. Ultracapacitors

The biggest challenge for electric cars is energy storage: Batteries are better than ever, but they are still expensive, slow to charge and have fairly limited life spans. The solution may be ultracapacitors, which hold less energy than batteries (at least as the technology currently stands) but have virtually none of their drawbacks. That means longer life spans, no messy chemical reactions, no issues with battery memory and far greater durability. Researchers have been trying to perfect automotive ultracapacitors for several years (MIT is working on nanotube-based ultracaps, while Argonne National Laboratory is exploring battery-ultracap hybrids), but the big move could come from the secretive Texas-based company EEStor, which announced in April that its barium-titanate design had passed a crucial test. Though the company's claims have aroused skepticism, EEStor's automotive partner, ZENN Motors, is hyping the release of an ultracapacitor-powered car in 2010.

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